I have been thinking about the post Puntz made about an open source program for helping with form analysis, TAB price display and bet placement. I already have a program that does most of this although it is not in a polished form yet (as it was for my own use I have not put nice forms and reports for all the functions). As it would take quite a bit of work to make it into a program suitable for use by everyone I cannot afford to give it away for free but I also realise that most punters are not willing to pay a lot of money for software so was trying to work out how it could be done at low or no cost to you guys but I still got paid for my work. One idea I had was to approach one of the TABs to see if they would fund the further development so that they could offer the software to their internet betting customers. Obviously if I went down this road the software would be locked in to a single TAB so the question is:

If one of the TAB's was to offer a program for downloading and analysing daily form as well as displaying live odds on the races and allowing you to place bets would you use it?

I imagine the TAB would want to restrict you to betting with them (so the program would only place bets with that TAB) and would require you to have a phone/internet account with them with a certain minimum balance or possibly betting activity in the last 7 or 14 days (ie. an active account) before you could download the days form to the program (ie. you would have to logon to get the form).

Some of the features would be:
* Historical form database to allow you to test system ideas (eg. show me the profit or loss if I back runners that won last start by 1 length or more and are starting at the same distance within 21 days). Due to the large database sizes I imagine the basic program you download would not have a historical database (but it would obviously build up over time) but maybe you could order a CD with 1 or 2 years data for a reasonable cost.
* Ability to download form files each day from the TAB website and search for selections based on your criteria (you could save these criteria so each day you could check for matches with the click of a mouse)
* Live display of TAB prices from the internet feed for any race you select
* Download of results at the end of each day (or during the day for races completed). Results would be stored in database for future reference and testing of ideas
* Ability to place bets for system selections or for manual selections
* Display of TAB account history and balances


What does everyone think? Would you use it if it was available and would you open an account with a different TAB to gain access to the service? Or would you prefer for the software to be able to display prices from all three TABs and in this case would you pay for it (and if so, how much)?

Any comments, suggestions or wish lists welcome!

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"Computers can do that????" - Homer Simpson